Philippa Pearce,
(born Jan. 23, 1920, Great Shelford, near Cambridge, Eng.—died Dec. 21, 2006, London, Eng.), British book editor and children’s writer who , was best known for her Carnegie Medal-winning novel Tom’s Midnight Garden (1958), a mystical tale of friendship and growing up in which 10-year-old Tom befriends Hatty, a girl from the past whom he meets in a magical garden that appears at night only when the grandfather clock strikes 13. The classic story was filmed in 1999 and was later adapted for the stage. Pearce’s other books included the semiautobiographical Minnow on the Say (1955), The Children of the House (1968), the Whitbread Prize-winning The Battle of Bubble and Squeak (1978), and The Little Gentleman (2004). She also wrote numerous short stories and book reviews. Pearce was made OBE in 1997.

Click anywhere inside the article to add text or insert superscripts, subscripts, and special characters.
You can also highlight a section and use the tools in this bar to modify existing content:

Add links to related Britannica articles!
You can double-click any word or highlight a word or phrase in the text below and then select an article from the search box.
Or, simply highlight a word or phrase in the article, then enter the article name or term you'd like to link to in the search box below, and select from the list of results.

Note: we do not allow links to external resources in editor.
Please click the Web sites link for this article to add citations for
external Web sites.